Cooling of heat generation components in general and semiconductor circuits in particular has been an important issue for many years. With continuous increases in transistor density and power consumption of microprocessors, the need for lower cost and more compact microprocessor cooling arrangements has become more desirable to further performance advancements. One problem, in particular in microprocessors, is that heat is generated in a limited physical space. Consequently, for effective cooling, the heat needs to be spread over a much larger area for more efficient cooling.
An example of cooling heat generating components is forced air convection. For example, many processors of current computer systems are cooled by a heat spreader, which distributes the heat generated by the processor over a larger surface which is then cooled by forced air convection using an electric fan.
Patent application US 2007/0017659 A1 discloses a heat spreader having a fluid sealed between two plates and a pumping mechanism to actuate a multi-phase flow of the fluid in a planar surface. Thermal energy from an electronic component in contact with the heat spreader is dissipated from a core region via the working fluid to the entire heat spreader and then to a heat sink. Surface enhancement features located between the two plates aid transfer of thermal energy from a first metal plate into the fluid.
Although improved heat flow from a heat generating component to a much larger surface is obtained with the aforementioned technique, a challenge exists to provide even better methods and devices for cooling a heat generating component. In particular, it is desirable that the cooling efficiency of a heat spreader is increased in order that the cooling of even more powerful heat generating components is possible. Conversely, the energy used by a cooling arrangement of a given heat generating component should be reduced in order to improve the overall energy efficiency. In addition, it is a challenge to provide methods and devices for cooling systems comprising a plurality or network of heat sources with variable loads.